February 2010

The Dead Relative

McCaffery: Do you recall the germinating idea for The Dead Father?

Barthelme: A matter of having a father and being a father.

McCaffery: In some basic sense the book deals with the notion that we’re all dragging around behind us the corpses of our fathers, as well as the past in general.

Barthelme: Worse: Dragging these ahead of us. I have several younger brothers, among them my brother Frederick, who is also a writer. After The Dead Father came out, he telephoned and said, “I’m working on a new novel.” I said, “What’s it called?” and he said, “The Dead Brother.” You have to admire the generational wit there.

Featured is a painting by my brother. Ever feel like you are, inevitably, always in a shadow? Or do you feel inspired by a talented sibling?

Power Quote / 47 Comments
February 2nd, 2010 / 5:20 pm

The Amazon crew are being such infantile shitheads with the whole Macmillan thing.  Aw, Apple is going to make your ugly, stupid Kindle obsolete?  It’s like when a new baby comes home and the older, less cute kid throws a tantrum.  (Analogy via my roommate.)  Wipe the oatmeal off your chins and grow up.

benmarcus.com

Ben Marcus has updated his personal website with new content, with excerpts of some recent work (specifically, a section of “The Moors” from the latest Tin House, and a piece on Thomas Bernhard from Harper’s in 2006). Hopefully this is a precursor to his hopefully soon forthcoming next novel, The Flame Alphabet.

He’s also put up some pieces by other authors, including a ridiculously sublimed piece, “The Copper Beeches” by the excellent Mark Doten. Check this man out:

Mother, father, me, here in the mansion, she and her father over the garage, the Mechanic’s House, we called it, her father a mechanic, then a suicide, still after his death we called it the Mechanic’s House, not the Suicide’s House. Spied through bedroom window, tits in profile, bigger by the year, opera glasses, the two of us children, just think, two children, running among the sycamores, then our crawl space where the Second Nocturne hissed. Our hand-crank record player, she wouldn’t have abandoned all that. And the stench in the foyer, lounge and conservatory, rotting meat. Perhaps a human stench, a human rot

I want Doten’s book Green Zone Kidz now.

Author Spotlight / 80 Comments
February 2nd, 2010 / 4:00 pm

INTERVIEW WITH PAUL TREMBLAY ABOUT SLEEP

slumberland

I met Paul Tremblay at last year’s ReaderCon, and then I read his novel The Little Sleep, a noir about a detective with narcolepsy.  His condition causes him to hallucinate and to confuse dreams with reality, which makes his investigations really difficult and his reliability as a narrator uncertain at best.  I really dug it.  Now there’s a sequel, No Sleep Till Wonderland, just out, so I asked Paul some sleep-related questions…

READ MORE >

Author Spotlight / 11 Comments
February 2nd, 2010 / 3:48 pm

Word Spaces (18): Andrew Ervin

[Andrew Ervin is the author of Extraordinary Renditions, coming this fall from Coffee House Press. He took some time to show us around his home in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where he edits the Southern Review.]

As usual, I have a number of different projects going on and for each I write using different tools.

For short stories, book reviews, and whatever this thing for HTML Giant turns out to be, I use the program OmmWriter, which my friend Nikki recommended. I like it a great deal & encourage everyone with a Mac to download it. For the edits to Extraordinary Renditions, which will be published on Sept. 1, I’m using Word for Mac, which I detest.

READ MORE >

Word Spaces / 49 Comments
February 2nd, 2010 / 2:00 pm

there be a fire sale

Orange flickers and flame.

Author News & Presses / 10 Comments
February 2nd, 2010 / 1:32 pm

Dance Dance Imperialism

Do they hate us or is it us that hates them? Probably a little bit of both, but sometimes it’s just nice to relax.

Web Hype / 7 Comments
February 2nd, 2010 / 1:18 pm

RIP Sweetie Niedenthal (1999-2010)

This is my favorite dog-death poem. It is tearing me up right now. What are your favorite pet-death works, or pet-death moments in works?

SKEIN is Calling

Today is the day to make it your business to submit to the print journal of your dreams. To that end, the great Seth Parker, editor of SKEIN, has this to say to you today:

With an ear to the strange womb of 21st Century letters, SKEIN Magazine, a small, mostly hand-made journal of poetry and very short fiction (under 750 words), founded in 2003 in Athens, GA and now nestled in Marietta, seeks submissions for what will be its 7th issue.

Queries, comments or submissions (.doc or .rtf) can be sent to the editor at skeinmagazine@gmail.com.

Uncategorized / 4 Comments
February 2nd, 2010 / 12:12 pm

[Via Christopher Newgent] Here’s a call for submissions from Booth, a handsome looking journal made by the MFA program at Butler University. (more…)